Virtually
by Eternal Contradiction
Summary: Every year, on this day, Relena is summoned to Earth by her mother. This year, she forgets, but through a present from Hilde is able to remember so much more. 1xR. Virtual Reality soft lemonade.


Title: Virtually

Author: RelenaFanel

Disclaimed.

Summary: Every year, on this day, Relena is summoned to Earth by her mother. This time, she forgets, but through a present from Hilde is able to remember so much more. 1xR. Virtual Reality soft lemonade.

* * *

"No!" Relena exclaimed, leaning over her desk so she could speak directly into the screen of the video communicator. "Consult section forty-three of the Charter and then tell me that it isn't possible to…" She trailed off as her secretary stuck his head around her door.

"Package from Hilde." Relena's underling formed the sentence into a question as she shot an irate glance in his general direction. He mimed placing it in an armchair by the door and waited for her to nod in response before dropping the box and fleeing from the office. Relena ignored the inconvenient interruption as well as possible and turned her attention back to the conversation she was having with the Asteroid 11 delegate. He was muttering something about livestock

"Section forty-three has NOTHING to do with cows! It's about mining ore!" Relena reached over to press one of the buttons on the VidCom before she inadvertently told him exactly where he could extract ore from. "My lawyers will be in touch."

She could barely discern his squawk of protest as she closed the conversation. Relena sighed in annoyance, wishing she could lose her temper and slap people every once and a while. A pressure was beginning to pound behind her eyes, and the rigors of her day didn't allow for an hour off to combat a migraine. Sometimes, she wanted to put universal peace behind her own needs.

Ignoring her headache and self-pity, she grabbed her laptop off the desk and balanced her feet on the spot it vacated. "Today," she began to dictate into the microphone, the words transferring from her mouth on to the computer screen. At a loss to what the date actually was, she glanced towards the schedule on her desk. November 10th. "Wha?" She mumbled, clicking on the date on her computer desktop. It said the same thing.

Relena slammed her computer shut, shoving it on her desk as she stood and hurried towards the window. She had barely noticed it was autumn, let alone so late into the season. On the colonies, there was no difference between winter and summer, spring or fall. While growing up on Earth, a day like today would have been normal for late summer climate, and most of the time she found herself reading the colony weather and making the same assumptions she normally would.

Now she was missing one of the most important occasions of her year.

Suddenly angry at herself rather than the temperate colony air, she backed away from the window and unintentionally knocked Hilde's gift off the chair. The recorded message popped up, showing Hilde's face at a sideward angle.

"Hey Rel." Usually Hilde gave a cheeky grin after she greeted someone. Relena paused, staring at the hologram talking at her. For some reason, her somber-eyed best friend managed to calm her nerves easier than a muscle relaxant or block of chocolate. Crouching down, she turned the present upwards so the message could be viewed as it should and reset it back to the beginning.

"Hey Rel. I was tweaking this so it could be a super Christmas present for ya. It isn't really ready yet, but I think you need it today. I know how stressed you get on the 10th." Hilde shot a sympathetic glance right before the recording finished with, "give yourself some time to remember the good."

Intrigued, Relena ripped into the box and pulled out a goofy looking helmet. It was a rememory machine. They were all the rage this year, and she knew some people who swore by them as a destressor. All she had to do was put it on and think of the person or event she wanted to recall, and the device would recreate the scene. Really, she didn't have time for such trivialities, but it was tempting.

Relena placed her present back in the box. She got as far as opening the door to her office before glancing back. What harm could a few minutes of happiness cost her today? She needed something to take her mind off the guilt and anxiety she was feeling. Biting her lip, she looked at the box and then back at her secretary staring at her from his desk in the corridor. Memory or reality? Artificial happiness or life responsibilities? Past? Present? Present? Yes, she decided, closing the door. She was going with the present.

Quickly, eyes already shifting from the dishonor of self-indulgence, Relena grabbed the Rememory and plopped into her chair. She propped her legs on the desk once again, trying to make herself as comfortable as possible. Engineers had proclaimed this thing perfectly safe. Despite the fact that she need not worry about her safety, she took a slightly nervous breath before plopping the helmet on her head…

x.x.x.x.x.

Splash!

Droplets of water flew through the air, speckling on her already drenched skin. She giggled, sounding exactly like the five-year old she was. The real Relena took a moment to marvel at the experience of reliving a moment exactly like it had been down to the last detail when she barely remembered more than a few impressions of it when she was awake. Before she could think too deeply, she was dragged back down into re-experiencing her memories.

Her small arm plopped into the water, reciprocating the hail of water directed at her moments ago. "Gotcha," she shrieked with laughter at her father who was crouched beside the water with his hand poised to flick the liquid at her again. A drop dripped off his nose and trickled into the pool. With her splash she had speckled his expensive business suit and silk tie with water, but he barely blinked an eye at the damage. He had started it, after all.

He began to loosen his tie and slip off his jacket. "Oh, you're on."

x.x.x.x.x.

"You're on next, Miss Relena." A lady with a clipboard frowned down at her before moving along the hallway in search of someone else to look at disapprovingly.

Relena wiped her sweaty hands against her poofy skirt, trying to dispel some of the nervousness cloying in her stomach at the idea of walking out in front of all those people. She glanced through a part in the curtain, the rows upon rows of people watching the performance did nothing to help her anxiety. Almost immediately she spotted her mother's perfectly coifed light-blond hair reflecting the blue lights from the stage lighting.

Relena began giggling and felt like she couldn't stop. One of the girls next to her elbowed her in the stomach, but that just made her laugh more. She was too young to realize it was only her nerves that kept her amused and not actual hilarity in the situation. She looked towards her parents again. Her father wasn't looking at the stage but at the sliver between the curtain and the wall where she was peeking out of. His expression was stern as he looked at her disapprovingly, though she never did figure out how he could see her beyond the silk hangings and amid the crowd of little girls in pink tutus. Relena immediately stopped laughing, upset that she had made her father angry. Then he winked at her.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x.

She pried one of her eyes open, trying to keep the other shut. The opened eye watered, not allowing her to see through it. She was sure she didn't look overwhelmingly cool at the moment anyway. She was standing in front of a gilded mirror in the downstairs hallway, trying to figure out how to wink. At this moment she could be watching early morning cartoons. Of course, at the age of eight she was far too old to be doing that. It just wasn't cool. So she just never told anyone she still did (along with playing with Barbies, asking her cook to cut the crust off her sandwiches, and believing in Santa).

"Morning dear," he father muttered on his way down the hall towards the basement. Saturdays were the only mornings he was able to sleep in, as his work only started at noon on that day. It was a morning ritual for him to drag himself out of bed around ten and hobble down into the gym set up in the bottom of their house. Sometimes, if nothing good was on TV, she would sit on one of the legs of the Airmaster and swing while he was running on the treadmill.

She grunted in return.

He stopped his zombie-like walk into the bowels of their house and raised an eyebrow at her. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to wink," she explained. She also wanted to learn how to do that eyebrow thing he was doing. "How do you do it?"

"Just keep trying. It'll come." He winked at her, diverting his path so he could grab a glass of orange juice in the kitchen. She followed him in, hoping he would pour her a glass as well. She had to make sure he didn't drink out of the carton again, because that was just nasty.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.

Relena gulped down blue Gatorade from the bottle, wincing slightly at the dry bitter taste. Her coach had insisted on replacing electrolytes through the liquid instead of using plain water. She didn't really know what electrolytes were, but she wasn't sure they were important enough to warrant the foul drink. Of course, this was all a matter of personal taste. She had a friend who guzzled the stuff as if it were a treat. Quickly, she wiped her armband across her forehead, trying to get rid of the sheen of sweat on her temples. Her mother thought tennis was a nice lady-like sport for her to take up. She also thought that young ladies didn't perspire, they glowed. Ha!

She readjusted one of the clips keeping her hair back from her face and glanced towards the stands for her parents. She had just won against her opponent and she couldn't see them watching with the other parents with goofy homemade signs, or video taping devices in their hands. Relena knew that in a matter of moments, the next match would be over and it would be her turn to step back into the court. If this game went smoothly, she'd be up for the semi-finals next weekend. Her school was proud to have such an intelligent student such as herself involved in both sports and student council. It looked good for them to be able to brag about the Vice Foreign Minister's daughter.

Too bad she couldn't say the same about her parents.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Relena smiled next to her father and mother in front of the podium as they looked out at a crowd of political supporters. The public was clapping, her father was pleased at the success of his speech, and she was learning to perfect her faux politician smile. It would become a weapon she would wield expertly in the future.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.

Relena kicked her feet in the dust beneath the swing, a layer of the dirt coating her white socks, and wearily eyed the girl next to her.

"Come on," Liz said. "It's only lemonade."

"I know what hard lemonade means," Relena informed her, frowning sternly. "We're too young to drink alcohol."

"There is hardly any in it at all," the other girl said, raising the bottle to her lips again. "Don't be such a mommy's girl."

"Daddy's girl," Relena informed her primly as she stood up from the swing and walked away.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x.

"Happy birthday, my little girl." The Vice Foreign Minister looked nothing like the high ranking politician he was, and more like a father perplexed with how quickly his daughter was growing as he sat next to her on the outside deck. Relena was staring moodily into the shimmering waters of the pool, barely even acknowledging his presence. He continued on quietly, "you missed your own party."

She fidgeted, picking at the torn hem of her dress. "I'm sorry," she whispered into the cool night.

"Is there anything you would like to talk about?" He asked her, always the supportive parent, when he had the time.

Relena shook her head, light brown hair fluttering softly around her face. They lapsed into silence. She lied to him. She had so many questions she could ask, but didn't know how to word them, or whether they could still talk about the drivel of her personal life now that she was a teenager. She no longer wanted to know why the sky was blue, or how many Senators resided on the World Federation Board, but about boys and makeup. Mom questions. Finally, her curiosity got the better of her, and she asked the question every young girl has to ask once. "How do you know when you're in love?"

"Ahhh," her father replied, full of uncomfortable understanding for the way she was acting on this happy occasion. "It's a wonderful feeling, full of emotions. I only ever truly loved one woman in my life."

"Mom," Relena replied, nodding.

"Yes, the woman who gave birth to you." He replied. She didn't notice the strange way he worded it, and somewhere in her real mind, a light clicked for Relena. This memory explained a lot of questions Mrs. Dorlian hadn't been able to answer. "It is a wonder feeling. Your heart beats stronger whenever you see them, and you are full of emotions."

x.x.x.x.x.x.

Relena stormed into Heero's office, a filechip clenched in her hand and a frown marring her arresting features. "What is the meaning of this?" She asked him, gesturing to the computer chip as she rounded the desk to face him. The question was also referring to the memory. This one was false, as she couldn't remember it ever really happening. She was still a passenger within her own mind, as if she was trapped and could only watch as her body moved on with life. At the same time, she felt in control, as if she were acting out a script. She was a little frightened, but also oddly excited.

He glanced up at her without moving his head as she neared. His dark eyelashes hid his eyes from her sight, and she could feel her body start to respond to his entangling gaze.

"What's going on Heero?" She asked once she was standing beside him.

"I don't know." He replied, not paying her any further attention as he typed furiously on his precious laptop.

Relena could feel the anger boiling within her. She was tired of being ignored by this man she loved, of him putting her safety first but happiness last. Her breath hitched, and she felt the need to strike out at him despite her pacifist ways. Relena grabbed the back of Heero's chair, pushing it with as much force as she could. It rolled about a meter before smacking into the wall with a dampened bang. Heero had made no move to stop her, only stared up at her, a slightly questioning look on his face, and one of his eyebrows raised slightly as if he were only waiting to see what she would do.

She walked to him in two steps, not pausing for any pleasantries, and straddled his legs and the chair. "You will listen to me," she informed him, pressing her breasts against his chest. She brushed her lips against his, letting her kisses tell him what he needed to hear.

"Will I?" Heero asked, taking control of the kiss and pulling her hips closer to him. His cock was already hardening against her, and she exhaled a moan into his mouth. His hands weren't gentle. One was fisted into her hair, dragging her head back so the angle was more to his advantage.

She was at his mercy.

It was exactly where she wanted to be.

His other hand was sliding down the smooth material of her skirt, searching for the hem. His grip was tight as his hand made contact with bare skin, and he moved back up her leg. His fingers claimed and controlled without even trying. His tongue swiped lazily into her mouth, and Relena rewarded him by swivelling her hips against his erection.

"Relena." Heero growled, pulling her skirt entirely out of his way.

"Yes," she whispered, wicked desperation infused with her voice as she urged….

x.x.x.x.x.x.

… Heero stood before her, looking irritated as usual and slightly bemused. The machine helmet was in his outstretched arms, between both their bodies, where he had likely just plopped it off her head. "Relena." His mechanic pronunciation drawled her name the way it always did, but his knuckles were turning white from where he was death-gripping the Rememory.

"I think there is something wrong with it," she muttered, flushed from a combination of embarrassment and other things. Since her hand was a little bit too high on her own thigh and legs spread slightly too far apart for propriety, she made a big to-do about rearranging her hair and pretending nothing was out of the ordinary. Thank goodness he hadn't walked in a few minutes later. Who knows what he would have caught her doing then.

"Heh." He responded, narrowing his all-knowing eyes at the exposed length of her legs. Rapidly she swung her feet off the desk and scooted as far under her desk as the chair would roll. It was disconcerting to go from a situation, one which seemed so real, where they were getting hot and heavy in his office to this one. She shifted uncomfortably, still undeniably wet and aroused. Heero smirked.

Flustered, Relena wasn't sure it was worse or better that Heero had been the one to find her. She wanted to ask him what he had seen and heard, so instead she did what had become habit in any uncomfortable situation: she turned the conversation to business. "Is there transportation available which can get me to Earth within a couple of hours?"

"Not from here." He replied, automatically accessing the knowledge in the computer which was his brain. "You aren't authorized to go to Earth today."

"Today was my father's birthday."

Heero put the Rememory down on the desk, casually lounging against the wood as he did so. Correctly, he assumed this was leading into a deeper conversation. To cap off the effect, he crossed his arms in front of his chest and stared down at her.

Used to Heero's presence, Relena barely noticed his unwavering, hard gaze. Instead, she engaged him in conversation; something only fools tried and only she occasionally succeeded in. "Mom always expects me home to 'celebrate'."

Heero nodded once. Likely, his brain was accessing the information of almost ten years of her traveling to Earth around this time.

"I didn't realize until… every day looks the same here… I didn't know it was so late… I mean… my mom is going to kill me." Relena wiped away a tear, sniffing as she tried to keep others from welling in her eyes. She stared up at him, and then beyond the wild spikes of his hair in order to stare at the white ceiling. Somehow, that always made the tears in her eyes less inclined to fall down her face.

Instead of bolting or looking away in discomfort or disgust, Heero placed a hand casually on her shoulder.

"How could I forget?" She whispered, bowing her head. She brought her opposite hand up and intertwined her fingers with his. "I'm such a horrible daughter."

"He's dead," Heero replied sharply, unrelentingly squeezing her hand as she tried to jerk it away from his grasp. "You don't need a machine," he gestured behind him, "to remember the happiness. Just like you don't need a bereaved widow to remind you of his death."

"You don't know what you're talking about! You never experienced happiness or family." Relena snapped from the misguided urge to protect her kin from this outsider. Which was stupid because in recent years he had become part of her family. She wasn't sure, but it might be a sad thing that Heero was the only constant in her transient life.

He let go of her hand.

"I'm sorry." She muttered as he moved away from her side and put the desk between them. He replied with a curt nod. She wanted to put her head in her hands and cry again, but that would be a weakness she couldn't allow herself. Instead, she kept her gaze fixed on him, unsure more than ever of where she stood.

"You're correct. I didn't have any of that as a child." He sat in the seat across from her. Somehow, the helmet had ended up in his hands again. For some reason, he wasn't leaving the room or remaining silent like he usually did when they disagreed.

"Do you know what I wanted to be as a kid?" Relena asked, watching as he opened the wire panel on the back of the machine. She suddenly had an urge to open up to him and share a little bit of her childhood. Relena always shied away from bringing up mundane things in the presence of greatness, but maybe she needed to stop assuming Heero didn't want to hear. Maybe she ought to forget about the fifteen year old boy who didn't have a past and didn't expect to have a future and try to remember how much he had changed since then.

"A ballerina?" He replied, giving testament to the personal growth Relena had been thinking of. He poked at one of the wires he was working on before glancing up at her through his eyelashes, waiting for to continue. If he was a woman, or maybe just anyone else, she would have said the look was coy, and somewhat flirty. On Heero, it wasn't, though she was hard pressed to recognize what it did look like.

For a moment, Relena lost her train of thought because of the sensation of déjà vu. It could have been because of his extreme hotness, but she was trying not to think about that. "Only for a little while, and then I figured out that I'd actually have to learn how to dance." She didn't mention that because of her position in society, she had to learn a great deal of dances anyway. That wasn't the type of thing to talk to Heero about. "No, I wanted to be a firefighter."

Heero cocked one of his eyebrows slightly. "That is a highly physical demanding occupation for a young girl to dream of."

"Yeah," she replied. "But as a little girl I wasn't thinking of that. I wanted to be a hero. Like you are."

Heero remained silent for a moment, still working with the wiring in the Rememory. "I shouldn't have to reinforce your self confidence by reminding you that you are a hero to many people." He was frowning, whether from displeasure with her or the machine, she wasn't sure.

"I wasn't looking for you to!" Relena snapped back before she was able to control the reaction. On scale he was being less exasperating and infuriating today than usual - maybe at a four out of ten. After calmly sitting before him on those ten out of ten days without reacting negatively to him, she was less than impressed with the way her emotions were bubbling to the surface today. Personally, she thought she had many valid reasons for being upset, such as missing her father's birthday, and the impending phone call she was expecting from her emotionally distraught mother. Think soothing thoughts, she reminded herself. Immediately her brain connected to the scene in the Rememory with his hand moving up her thigh. Ok, that wasn't helping any. "Ok," she sighed as if admitting defeat. "I just wanted to jump out of burning buildings and land on the huge trampoline."

His lips quirked slightly at that. So slightly they may not have moved at all. "Is there a point to this conversation?"

"Not really." They fell into silence. Darn. He still had a lot of personal growth to do if they were going to have a normal conversation. Of course, she realized, if he were to act like a typical person, he wouldn't really be Heero. Here she was wishing he was acting like someone he wasn't. She'd have to work on that, because all she ever really wanted was him. Their non-relationship would only get worse if she expected him to be any different.

Surprisingly, Heero was the one who broke the silence by actually offering up personal information. "I didn't have any dreams when I was younger, but someone I respect once told me I was brilliant and could be anything I wanted to be."

Wow. An entire sentence! She smiled and nodded, urging him to continue. "That's true. Smart person."

He shrugged. "I wanted to be an astrometallurgical engineer."

Wait a minute. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "You are an astrometallurgical engineer." In fact, the whole thing was starting to sound familiar. "Heero! That was a conversation we had nine years ago."

"Yeah." He grabbed his personal communicator out of his pocket and hooked it up to the machine on his lap. He watched the screen for a second, muttering 'interesting' before disconnecting from Hilde's gift. He closed the back of the Rememory, balancing it on his lap as he finally looked at her, giving his full attention. She wasn't really worried about what he accessed. No, of course she wasn't. There was no way he could have watched a copy of that little scene in his office, right? Heero did stuff like that all the time. Fixing things, not letting her fuck him on a chair.

"Is there a point to this conversation?" She mimicked him, smiling slightly to show she was teasing him. When he stood up, she panicked slightly. She hadn't meant for him to leave. Instead of turning towards the door, however, he stepped towards her.

"No," he replied, following her lead and copying the words she had spoken a few minutes before. "Not really." He leaned over her desk, plopping the helmet of the Rememory back on her head and tapping playfully on the plastic casing. If she listened very carefully to his fingers beating on the helmet, she thought she could pick out a song, or maybe a secret message in Morse code. It was strange to think of Heero doing things at random, such as lazing about or simply tapping so that the muffled beats reached her ears and started to grate on her nerves.

"You fixed it?" She questioned, squinting at him through the opaque screen in front of her eyes. She could make out a vague Heero-shaped shadow. Annoyed that she was missing watching his unexpressive face, she flipped the visor up.

"It wasn't broken," he answered. "Hilde left you a surprise for your viewing pleasure." He smirked, flipping the screen back down in front of her eyes. "Enjoy," he whispered, the breath from his words deliberately brushing against her neck as the last scene reactivated. Oh yeah, Heero was definitely a sadistic bastard.

* * *

© RelenaFanel.July2.2006

A/N: There may be a chapter 2. There may not be. I wrote half of this a year ago, so there is a distinguishable difference in quality if you know where to look. I bet you thought they were going to have sex in real life, didn't you? Anyway, I'd like to know which of the memories (besides the false one) you liked the best.

Review, as always.


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